Search This Blog

Cathy Pountney: Workaround for Data Group bug

Cathy's posting a workaround for the bug she reported earlier with Visual FoxPro SP2 but the deafening silence from the Redmond camp is kind of annoying. We all looked forward to having a single solid release of VFP from which we could build solutions around - but one that wouldn't be introduce major new problems from previous versions.

Now I suppose one could argue "why didn't this come up in the beta test" but this brings to bear the entire issue of a "public" vs. "private" beta. In my mind, with a Private Beta, users are far more likely to be critical of functionality and not bring on a list of "I want" items. Sure there will be a few - but most developers and users I know of in "private betas" are well-aware that by the time a product goes into "Beta" - the feature list has been locked down and now it's time to fix bugs.

When you release a "public beta", even to developers, you've immediately open yourself up to "why can't it do this" or "I want it to do this", stuff that can take time away from just about everyone on a project.

Now when you look at the Microsoft Connect site, it gets a little more interesting.

There are items that have been reported as Resolved since the release of SP2 but there's no comment about HOW they've been resolved. Does that mean there's a hotfix coming? Or are these items being fixed (somehow) with Sedna? (which still has not yet been released)

It seems Cathy was right about "if enough of us complain, they will address it." but we aren't seeing HOW it's being addressed just yet.

One thing I did notice - is that there is no easy way in MS Connect for someone to pull up all the VFP issues so one thing that would be useful woud be for everyone to preface their bug reports with VFP SP2 (or VFP, at the very least).

While I wouldn't expect MS to continually issue fixes for bugs as they come up in VFP, some of the issues that are being reported are big enough to warrant a hot fix , in my mind. As I said above, I don't mind having a product with known bugs (that have been in there for a while) that we have to work around but regression testing aside, I don't think anyone expected any loss of major functionality. Has anyone heard how these items will/won't be resolved?

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Other Apps

Labels

Comments

BrianA said…

I posted a couple of new-to-sp2 bugs. One (re the Help file glitches) I haven't heard back on. The other (which was easily repro'd) got this reply a fortnight ago:--------------------Product/Technology - Visual Studio and .NET FrameworkFeedback ID - 306321Feedback Title - OBJTOCLIENT()

The following fields or values changed:

Field Resolution changed from [External] to [Won't Fix]

Field Status changed from [Active] to [Resolved]------------------------

All in all, I don't know whether to be pleased they're doing _something_, or worried because if they aren't prepared to fix a bug which can be easily repro'd what are they going to do about some of the other, less easily pinned down, bugs?

Apart from that I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the whole situation ...

What's interesting here is the breakdown of people. Yes, I think it's understandable that the Fox community is getting older.

Another factor is the growth of the mobile and web environments taking over development. These environments really do push people towards the newer non-SQL or free SQL/hosted environments but more towards hosted storage options like Amazon and Google. A tool like FoxInCloud that helps MOVE existing applications to the cloud inherently competes with those environments.

But FoxInCloud also allows developers to extend their application further by giving them a starting point using Javascript and the basic CSS (such as Bootstrap). If you're not rebuilding your application from scratch, it's certainly a great step forward.

In a move that will be sure to anger open source (or rather anti-paid software, anti-Microsoft open source) zealots, Microsoft is planning to buy GitHub.

A year ago, I mused about why Microsoft would shut down CodePlex and how the world needs competing source code repositories to be strong. I'm not the only one per this Slashdot article :
"...people have warned about GitHub becoming as large as it did as problematic because it concentrates too much of the power to make or break the open source world in a single entity, moreso because there were valid questions about GitHubs financial viability...." - Jacques Mattheij

I will be interested in seeing this play out - whether developers jump ship or not. Have all the efforts Microsoft has made in pushing towards open source be seen as genuine or will all the zealots jump ship or maybe even attack?

Microsoft's comment about why they shut down CodePlex referred to how spammers were using CodePlex. Well, GitHub has its own …

I just received an update for Office 365. It certainly includes some cool features - including starting in one environment and picking it up in another environment. In recent years, I've certainly enjoined the use of Continuity on a Mac and in fact, I feel spoiled being able to start a message in one environment (even Google) and then finish it off on another. This has become some pervasive when we were reviewing our most recent backlog at a client site, a similar feature was added to the current workload.

But with web applications, the trend is to reduce the amount of software on a client machine. I used to have automatic backup for all of my machines (thanks Carbonite!) but these days, many of my machines don't need anything beyond the core OS and some basic applications. Certainly that's the feeling with Chromebooks and even the lightweight aspect of many iOS apps. The functionality is mostly in the cloud.